Jewish Shopkeeper

He has disavowed the part and taken the whole,

And the tides of the city's life are to him as the pulse of his

own blood.

Her sunset, flung brazen among gray buildings,

Is the flame and the hardness of his faith to her.

Her voluptuous colored mists and the bitter chill of her

darkness

Mingle no more strangely than do his desire and his dis-

dain.

The long reaches of a building into the morning sky

Are the highest temples of his thought.

When he sits in his basement shop and laughs,

He stands triumphant upon a pinnacle, and the city

seethes below him;

He stands upon a pinnacle, and the scorn of his triumph

Is the brilliant white defiance of his city to the night.

Charlotte Corbett

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